Hoggard turns the Test

By Scyld Berry in Bridgetown

12:00AM BST 04 Apr 2004

England (226 & 93-2) beat West Indies (224 & 94) by 8 wickets

One of the features of a successful Test captain is that he takes a marginal player and makes him into a main one. No better instance of that could there be than Michael Vaughan's transformation of Matthew Hoggard into a bowler who yesterday took a hat-trick of West Indian middle-order batsmen exactly when the third Test was in the balance, and turned it into a rout.

While the home captain Brian Lara stood aghast at the non-striker's end, the Yorkshire swing bowler ran through the flimsiness that is modern West Indian batting. Once West Indies had been dismissed for 94, their lowest total at Kensington Oval, England quickly knocked off the target of 93 to win by eight wickets before the close of the third day.

The first Test hat-trick for England since the one by another Yorkshireman, Darren Gough in Sydney in 1998-9, consisted of the wickets of Ramnaresh Sarwan, Shivneraine Chanderpaul and Ryan Hinds. They were down on the scorecard as the Nos 4, 5 and 6 of West Indies, but in the face of Hoggard's precisely targeted fast-medium bowling they did not bat as such.

The Kingston capitulation for 47 all out had prepared the ground, numbing local minds and making England supporters, again the majority, aware of the possibilities of another collapse. But it was still remarkable that such a disintegration should happen so soon after the West Indians' all-time lowest total.

Related Articles

Chris Gayle had set the worst example the previous evening with his recklessness. The shot he had played - no foot movement, just a cross-batted swipe - was evidence, at a stroke, for the older generation of West Indians who chide the youth of today for their lack of commitment and hard work.

In other circumstances, Gayle might have found himself dropped for the next Test in Antigua, but Devon Smith, the Grenadian opening batsman who scored a hundred in Kingston, has broken his left thumb. Gayle's shot was also a complete contrast to the five hours of resolution from Graham Thorpe. Never did Thorpe relapse into self-indulgence during his match-winning innings.

In the 6.2 overs of the West Indian innings on Friday evening Hoggard had bowled too much width, and Harmison had under-pitched, but all waywardness was cut out from yesterday's resumption. Given some cloud-cover, Hoggard swung the ball more than at any other venue on this tour, and - aided by the uneven surface perhaps - also produced the best bouncers of his Test career. Just as Thorpe benefited from playing in the three-day practice game, so did Hoggard, who ran in as rhythmically as ever he has.

England's first wicket of the day - the second of the West Indian innings - came when Hoggard had Daren Ganga caught at third slip. More so than an English opening batsman, Ganga 'felt' for the outswinger, playing it in front of his front pad instead of waiting it to reach him and adjusting accordingly, if only minutely.

Then, after the morning drinks break, came the hat-trick. On previous tours of bygone eras, a pace bowler would never have been kept going more than an hour in this heat. But Vaughan, instead of introducing Simon Jones, and knowing that England have the fittest band of bowlers in their history, kept faith with his fellow Yorkshireman and was re-paid to the full.

The hat-trick wickets came from two outswingers and a ball angled across, aided by two catches behind the wicket and a leg-before decision by Darrell Hair. The umpiring in this match - make it this series - has not been good, but at least at the decisive moment for Hoggard it was accurate. Another umpiring mistake was made yesterday morning when Rudi Koertzen reprieved Ganga after the opener had gloved a snorter from Harmison.

Harmison, Jones, and Flintoff in the first innings, had all run through the home side, and now it was Hoggard's turn. First Sarwan, as if he had not been watching Ganga's dismissal, aimed a drive at another outswinger, again playing it well in front of his pad, and edged it straight to Ashley Giles in the gully.

Second, Chanderpaul. If Hoggard could have sat down with a video-tape of Chanderpaul's batting and been allowed to place the ball on the exact spot where he wanted to pitch it, he could not have done better than what he did. Again it was his regulation outswinger, an inswinger to the left-hander, and it pinned Chanderpaul as he almost cringed in his crease.

Hinds, at No 6, has scored one century in his first-class career. Like all his team-mates, except Lara and Collymore, who have had brief stints at Warwickshire, he has not played county cricket as his predecessors of the 1980s did, and therefore he has seen little of the ball moving sideways. If Hoggard could have picked an inexperienced, almost ingenuous No 6 for his third and final victim, he need not have looked further.

Three-quarters of Kensington Oval was behind Hoggard as he ran in for the hat-trick ball. Many England supporters had paid over £300 for their match tickets so they were not going to miss out on the excitement of this moment. Roared on, Hoggard raced in, intent on giving the left-handed Hinds the same delivery with which he had trapped Chanderpaul.

But fortune blessed him, as it has to in cricket. Instead of swinging, the ball angled across Hinds, whose bat was not only open-faced but crooked too. The smile was almost visible on Andrew Flintoff's face as the ball came towards him at second slip: low down but with enough legs on it to carry safely into the bucket hands. It was notable how every member of the England touring party, player and official, offered congratulations to Hoggard. This team are as united as the West Indians are not. And as Lara watched England's cricketers leaping and cavorting, he must have felt they were dancing on a grave.

With showers freshening the pitch from lunchtime onwards, batting became ever more difficult, and Lara and his tailenders did relatively well to turn 48 for six into 94 all out.

No visiting team has made a clean sweep of West Indies at home: at the rate the home side are now falling apart, the Barmy Army had cause to sing "We are going to win 4-0!"